County court in the Croatian coastal city Split issued one-year prison sentence for two Croats who beat a Serb on Orthodox Christmas in 1998.

The Split county court upheld a previous guilty verdict that handed the two attackers one-year prison sentences for inflicting heavy physical injuries on an older villager that eventually led to his death a month later.

According to an investigation carried out at the time of the killing, two Croat cousins - Stipe and Drazan Bulj - came to elderly Serb Jovan Borovic’s house in the southern village of Suhac, late on Orthodox Christmas Eve nearly 20 years ago and beat him with wooden sticks.

The court, however, established that Borovic and Drazan Bulj were engaged in a scuffle on the floor, while Stipe Bulj hit Borovic with a blunt wooden object when the 60-year-old’s dog started to attack.

Borovic was hospitalised after the attack but was released only a day later. He was later re-admitted to hospital with a lung inflammation connected to the skull fracture he suffered during the Christmas Eve attack and later died on February 4, 1998.

A third individual, Zdravko Basic, who was 19 at the time of the attack and a cousin of the Buljs, was acquitted. No witnesses or Borovic, himself, claimed in 1998 that he took part in the attack.

Borovic’s family were angered by the light sentences handed down to the Buljs, claiming the attack was a hate crime that targeted Borovic because of his Serbian and Orthodox background.

The court claimed that all of the facts of the case were established by a lower court municipal court in nearby Sinj, while information Borovic’s injuries were gathered from his medical records.

Stipe and Drazan Bulj claimed they had never been involved in an altercation with Borovic, which was refuted by the testimony of a police officer who was on the scene of the crime and saw Borovic lying badly beaten on the ground. The officer also testified to having seen wooden sticks a short distance away.

Police filed criminal charges against the attackers back in 1998, but the start of the trial was delayed until 2002 due to complications with witnesses and forensics experts.

The case was eventually handed over to municipal court new judge in 2007, who later handed down a conviction in 2011.

A county court, however, overruled the verdict and a new trial was launched in the Split municipal court.

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https://www.balkaninsight.com/en/art...erb-01-16-2018